“What happened, Master?” Dagmar’s voice was hushed. Awestruck.
“The king has been taken,” Ivo mused, his voice low and deliberate.
Dagmar stifled his sigh. He knew that much. He wanted to understand the things he had not been present for. He wanted to know why he’d been summoned from the forest earlier in the day.
“You sent Bayr to find me,” Dagmar reminded him.
Ivo raised his eyes slowly, as though resurfacing from very deep thoughts.
“I sought to gather all the brothers. I have felt the king’s passing for some time now. I feared he would be struck down. But his death was a merciful one. Sudden. It is the way any man would want to go, taken in an instant in the temple of the gods. Surely he will dine in Valhalla tonight.”
“Why was he here?” Dagmar pressed. The king visited the temple infrequently. He had his own chapel in the palace and rarely entered the sanctum.
“The king and the queen came to seek my guidance. The king asked about his daughter. She is with child again, but all her children have died before taking their first breath. The queen asked that I summon the Norns and ask the fate of her child.”
Dagmar was silent, waiting for Master Ivo to continue. He knew the Highest Keeper would tell him only what he wanted him to hear, and the less eager he appeared, the more Ivo would impart. Ivo made him wait, not speaking, yet not dismissing him either.
“I saw Lady Alannah holding a child,” Ivo murmured finally. “She was overjoyed. I imparted this news to King Ansel and the queen.”
Dagmar gasped. Banruud had another son. Desdemona had prophesied that Bayr would be his only child. Mayhaps her blood curse had come to an end.
“This is . . . this is . . . wonderful news,” Dagmar stammered.
Ivo nodded slowly and closed his black-rimmed eyes as though he still saw the image behind his lids. “The vision gave the king joy in his last moments.”
“We felt the ground shake as we climbed the hill,” Dagmar said. He’d felt the earth quake in exactly the same way the day Desdemona died. It was something he and Ivo had never discussed.
“It was sudden, like a storm on the sea,” Ivo ruminated. “The sanctum quaked, and I thought the temple would fall, that we would all be crushed. I urged the king to take shelter under the table, but the altar cracked, as though Thor smashed it with his hammer, and it fell, knocking us all to the ground.”
“What does it mean?” Dagmar asked, unable to keep the wonder from his tone.
“There is no hiding from the gods when they call us home,” Ivo said, and Dagmar winced, remembering the broken body of the king.
“We will be choosing a new king, Dagmar,” Ivo said.
“Of course, Master.” Ansel had been king all the years that Dagmar had been a keeper. He had never participated in the selection of a king, and his stomach twisted in apprehension.
“Bayr is Thor’s choice. Thor broke the altar. He took the life of one king in order to reveal another,” Ivo said, turning his black eyes on Dagmar.
Dagmar could only stare at the Highest Keeper, stunned.
“He is only seven years old, Master,” he protested, his heart thundering in resistance.
“He has been chosen, Dagmar. He was chosen from the beginning.”
“He has no clan,” Dagmar stammered. “The people will revolt.”
“His name is Bayr. He is of the clan of Berne. His mother knew it. You know it. And I know it as well, brother. I know he is the son of Banruud of Berne. The runes have shown me.”
Dagmar shuddered, willing back the torrent behind his eyes. He should have known Ivo would discover the truth. Ivo knew everything.
“Chieftain Banruud will never claim him,” Dagmar whispered, clinging to hope.
“It matters not. The Keeper of Berne will claim him,” Ivo answered evenly. “And you will testify of his lineage if it becomes necessary.”
“Please, Master. He is not ready.”
“He is our salvation.”
“He is a child.”
“We have all witnessed his power.”
“Power is not enough, Master. He must grow and learn.”
“You will teach him. You will be his counselor on the throne until he is of age.”
“Yes, I will teach him. I will give my life—I have given my life—for him. But he is a child,” Dagmar protested, his chest aflame with fear for his nephew, for himself. He could not be counselor to a king.
“Your fate will be his fate,” Ivo intoned. “Do you remember the day you brought the child, still covered in the blood and stain of his birth, into this sanctum?”
Dagmar nodded. The day was burned into his heart, seared into his consciousness, and never far from his thoughts.
“I knew then, Dagmar. I knew then that he would be king. He is Thor’s son,” Ivo stated, adamant. “We will call the clan chieftains together after the king is laid to rest. Then we will draw our runes and summon the gods. And we will choose a new king.”
4
As the day of King Ansel’s memorial drew near, the people of the clans began to move inland, making their pilgrimage to the center of Saylok to honor the late sovereign. The colors of the clans—Adyar gold, Berne red, Dolphys blue, Ebba orange, Joran brown, and Leok green—created a circular rainbow around the King’s Village, the people camping in their finery, awaiting the royal processional. Mourners, their braids severed and their colors bright, lined the long road that climbed Temple Hill, the only entrance to the temple and the palace of the king that didn’t require scaling cliffs or taking mountainous paths.
When the king of Saylok died, it was tradition that the men of the clans, in recognition of his passing, cut their hair. The long, tight braid they wore down their backs was removed—a braid that had been allowed to grow for the entire reign of the king—to signify the end of one era and the beginning of another. In Saylok, one could ascertain the longevity of a king by the length of his warriors’ hair. One by one, the warriors of every clan laid their braids upon the king’s casket as it trundled past. Ansel of Adyar had been King of Saylok for twenty years, and the braids of his warriors had grown long.
Women were not required to cut their hair when a king died, but many did, a sign of mourning and reverence, an indication of their personal devastation. The morning of the processional, the queen, her graying hair sticking up from her noble head in jagged tufts, walked behind the horse-drawn, open carriage where the body of her husband lay in a flag-draped coffin, the braids of his countrymen—a dozen different shades and lengths—spilling over the sides. People wept, and some women turned away, ashamed of their vanity in keeping their own hair.
The Keepers of Saylok never grew their hair at all. They kept their pates smooth, indicating their separation from the king and his subjects in every way. Master Ivo, his bare head gleaming, led the procession, his higher keepers behind him, the remaining keepers following in two straight lines, their flowing purple robes a reminder of their independence from any clan. Bayr did not walk with them. He was not a keeper—not yet even a supplicant—and his own thick braid had been lopped off at the base of his neck in accordance with the custom. When Dagmar had left with the other keepers, Bayr climbed the smallest turret on the north wall and ogled the colorful sea below him, the slow-moving parade, the mighty chieftains and the grim keepers, all descending the long road leading away from the temple and the palace of the king.